Business cards have been used as a printed introduction document for decades, wherein a 5 cm by 9 cm size business card is accepted as a standard size. Albums, holders, scanners, and other devices have been designed to accommodate cards of this size. The use of printed business cards is deeply entrenched in the business culture world-wide, and seemingly they have not disappeared with the mass introduction of digital alternatives. It is not conceivable that a business person will waive his printed business cards in favor of any digital alternative.
Digital business cards known in the art containing both printed and digital information have been introduced, as the owner of the business cards often wishes to provide, along with his business card, additional information, e.g. relating to his business or to other areas of interest. The digital information is stored on a compact disk (CD) that is cut to the size of a standard business card. Such a product is available from Amstore CD production Ltd, London, UK.
Prior art cards bearing printed and digital information are taught by U.S. Pat. No. 6,783,060 to Marappan and International Publication No. WO2005124932 to Atsmon et al.
The Marappan patent discloses a business card that contains printed textual information on the first side and magnetic media for storing electronic information on a second side. The second side contains all of the printed information displayed on the first side of the document. The business card also allows users to include additional information, such as attached files and hyperlinks, on the second side. To write and read to and from the business card, a reader/writer is disclosed to interface with a desktop computer.
However, the Marappan patent has a major disadvantage which limits its use. As clearly stated by the Marappan patent, a special card reader must be available in order to read this electronic information. In other words, the electronic information stored on the magnetic media of this business card can not be read by any standard computer or other mobile devices, such as a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) mobile hand-held device or a cellular phone.
The Atsmon patent introduces a double-sided male USB connector and various card-shaped devices having one or more male USB connectors. The device can be manufactured from flexible material using a lamination process and may be configured to communicate with a broad variety of other electronic devices.
However, almost none of the embodiments taught by Atsmon comply with the dimensions of a standard rectangular business card form factor.
Furthermore, according to the Atsmon patent the flexible material of the card is employed only as a means for doubling the thickness of the card, so that the whole card bends and the effective thickness will provide the tolerance required for inserting the connector into the receptacle. These embodiments of the Atsmon patent clearly do not guarantee a well-defined electrical contact between the pins of the connector part and the leads of the receptacle. In reality, the part opposite the connector that bends upon the connector part will tend to elevate from the connector part, thus neutralizing the effective thickness required and disconnecting the leads of the receptacle from contacting the connector part.
The only embodiment in the Atsmon patent that is a rectangular card-shaped device with dimensions similar to those of a credit card is the embodiment of FIG. 17. However, the description of this embodiment in the Atsmon patent is not enabling, because there is no indication of the way in which the male USB connector of this embodiment is inserted into a USB female receptacle of a host.
Thus, it would be highly advantageous to provide an innovative business card bearing both printed information and digital information, of a standard size and thickness, configured to properly connect to a computing device for reading and updating the digital information, while overcoming disadvantages of prior art techniques.